At the beginning of the World Café, I felt that the food was a great way to set the tone and atmosphere for the event. It took the educational tone out of the event and allowed us to meet everyone briefly without expectations. Everyone, regardless if they were shy or not joined into the conversation. The next step was the ice breaker game which was also a great way to break the silence it was quiet and forced us to communicate get an understanding of each other in order to work together. These two things I felt played a contributing role in the success of the conversations at the table it took away anxiety and helped form an idea of how the event will flow.
When people first sat down at the table I was hosting it was quiet, they waited for me to introduce myself and the table topic. My first table was all girls, I directed the conversation starting from the left and making my way around the table. I gave everyone the opportunity to speak at least once to answer the question. To begin I jumped right into the table question “What makes you feel alive.” When I went around the table I noticed I got short generic answers such as family, travel, and music. I found that the girls were very quiet but always had a smile on their faces. I
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There was three younger and one older woman from Japan and a young woman and an older gentleman from Brazil. Age played a big factor when it came to who controlled the conversation the older the age the more they felt entitled to speak. The older man from Brazil and the older woman from Japan spoke for more than half the time and sometimes spoke to each other and not the group. This isolated the young women from Japan they remained silent. Within the conversation between the older people, the gentleman spoke more that the woman, once again gender played a leading role in the flow of conversation not only between him and the woman from Japan but among all the individuals at the
Tannen points out “a greater percentage of discussion time is taken by men’s voices.” (2) She tells us why this is a disadvantage to the women in the classroom. She then continued to separate the two genders into their given stereotypes. Girls tend to separate themselves from large groups; they talk amongst
Everyone took their roles very serious, which was the fun part to me. When doing a project like this you want everyone being as serious as possible and playing their role as it should be. Logan Diehl (mayor) really set the stimulation when he stepped up to the podium in his suit to give an overview of the meeting and call the meeting to order. Another aspect of the stimulation I enjoyed and thought it brought realistic vibes was when the city council representatives which included myself introduced themselves and stated what ward they represented before asking their
In the introduction of Deborah Tannen’s “Conversation Style: Talking on the Job”, she compares and contrasts the ways men and women communicate. This reminds me of what I tell people that are struggling in their relationships. Women and men express themselves differently. Women think, but men act. If you can’t wrap your head around this, being in a relationship with anyone is going to be hard. Yet, this is such a basic way of looking at this issue. Not only are the genders vastly different, but each person relates to the world around them in a certain way. He or she also needs to be related to in a specific way. Looking at personalities and personal histories can give a better look at the way we communicate with each other. Tannen examines
Tannen, Deborah. “His Politeness Is Her Powerlessness.” You Just Don’t Understand: women and men in conversation. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. 203-5. Print.
In recent years, gender differences have already been one of the most controversial issues in various research. As an important communication tool of mankind, language is inevitably involved in controversies. However, Rachel Rafelman, a Canadian journalist and the author of “The Party Line” express her thought and opinion in her essay. She not only have some great points on what and how women and men are likely to talk, but also have different points on the talking environment. She comes up with facts and fit real and particle examples in her essay to make it understood. Whereas, Ronald Macaulay, a professor of linguistics and the author of “Sex Difference” uses words of novels to argue and promotes them as a cause of reinforce to men’s and women’s stereotypes in his essay. He argues through his whole as rebuttal and gives some examples to oppose the preconceived notion of sex differences. Over all, both Rafelman and Macaulay are the good writer but Rafelman is having upper to prove her essay better organized using her tones as per requirement.
No matter the society, the way a women verbally expresses her thoughts, whether direct or indirect, is always viewed as inferior to men who are always right. According to Tannen, the style of communication preferred by men is a more direct approach. They call women’s indirect style “‘covert,’ a term suggesting negative qualities like being ‘sneaky’ and ‘underhanded’” (Tannen 3). The way western men view women’s communication style is a reflection of how they view women in general- sneaky and underhanded. For the women this is not the case. They choose to speak indirectly simply because they feel that it is not their right to speak directly male dominated society. This ideology was a continuation from the 19th century in which it was a sin for women to speak directly. Elinor Keenan, an anthropologist found that in a village of Madagascar it is the women who are direct and men who are indirect. According to Keenan, the villagers “regard women’s direct style as clumsy and crude, debasing the beautiful subtlety of men’s language” (Tannen 9). This shows the similarities and differences of societies concerning women. While the preferred form of communication changed from culture to culture, women are still on the bottom of the social ladder when compared to men. When a
Do men and women effectively communicate in the same way, or is it just a conversation of misunderstanding? There is constantly a new interest in whether men and women converse successfully. Professor and journalist, Deborah Tannen writes, “Sex, Lies, and Conversation: Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other?” Tannen compares and contrasts all conversational styles, and explains how the expectation of dialogue affects how men and women converse. Tannen focuses on the subject of marriage and the imbalance of interest between male and female couples. The contrasting perspective however comes from, Deborah Cameron, author of, “What Language Barrier”. Cameron conveys that the stereotypes left upon male and female communication
(week 4 reading 1). "Difference" is a non-violent approach that indicates that develops the notion that men and women communicate from and in different cultural worlds (reference ppp). Deborah Tannen is a major advocate of this position with her book You Just Don't Understand (1990). (reference week4 reading 1). Comparing conversational goals, Tannen argues that men aim to communicate factual information, whereas women are more concerned with building and maintaining cooperative, caring, emotional relationships. In addition, Cameron (kai imerominia einai to week 4 reading 1) again provides a very good example of ‘difference approach’ helping us to understand the way it entered the public view of language and gender. The example used is the book of a mass-writer, John Gray, who wrote a fictional tale about how the two sexes migrated to planet earth from the different planets of Mars and Venus and that each sex is acclimated to its own planet's society and customs, but not to those of the
Communication between males and females has always been somewhat complicated. Because we are arguing that males and females have different cultures we wanted to take a look at what some of these differences might be. According to our research the inherent differences between male and female culture are the different roles that society holds for them and the ways these roles lead to different communication styles. The stereotypes that men and women grow up with affect the types of ways in which they communicate. We first wanted to take a look at how they specifically differ while men and women are arguing or having normal conversations. We also looked at the different types of networks that men and women share. These networks also differ and as do the reasonings for their formation. Although we do not think that men and women need to change their cultures to effectively communicate, we do think that better communication is possible. One of the researchers we took a look at was Deborah Tannen. According to Tannen the reason that men and women do not communicate well is that men and women use language differently. Women take the attitude that conversation is to explore solutions to common problems while men concern themselves more with getting information and hard data from conversation. Tannen states that what women look for in communication is human connection, while men consider status to be most important. They are looking for independence and are constantly looking for higher accomplishments. Intimacy threatens this independence, so men have a tendency to avoid it. One of the old sayings about women is that they talk more than men. It turns out that it is not necessarily true. Women seem to talk more in private conversations than do men. Women do not generally have a fear of intimacy and therefore are much more open with one another during private conversations. It is more difficult for women to use this type of communication style in the public arena. In that case it is men that do most of the talking. Tannen ultimately argues that men use communication as a weapon. They use long explanations to command attention from who it is they are speaking to. They use it to convey information and to ultimately gain agreement. Tannen suggests that through even simple conversation men are continually protecting their status. She sugg...
There are more differences than similarities in the way women and men communicate, as perceived by majority. From the start of 1990s, many authors and psychologists have written books highlighting this fact and portraying their conversations to be some catalogue comprising of misunderstandings.
Communication is an essential part of human life. People perceive things in a different way because of ethnic background differences, attitudes and beliefs, etc. These differences may affect our ability to communicate with our counterpart. Therefore, it is necessary to keep our mind open so that we can reduce the risk of communication breakdown. Men and women are different as everyone knows that. However, their differences are no just physiological and anatomical. Recent researches have concluded that there are remarkable differences between the two genders in the way their brains process information, language, emotion, cognition etc. Scientists have discovered the differences in the way men and women carry out mental functions like judging speed, estimating time, spatial visualization and positioning, mental calculation. Men and women are strikingly different not only in these tasks but also in the way their brains process language. This could account for the reason why there are overwhelmingly more male mathematicians, pilots, mechanical engineers, race car drivers and space scientists than females. On the other hand, there are areas in which women outperform men. Women are naturally endowed with better communication and verbal abilities. They are also effective than men in some of the tasks like emotional empathy, establishing human relations, carrying out pre-planned tasks and creative expressions (Kimura 1999).
Deborah Tannen is a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, and her research specialty is conversational style. Based on her observations, she states, “for males, conversation is the way you negotiate your status in the group and keep people from pushing you around; you use talk to preserve your independence. Females, on the other hand, use conversation to negotiate closeness and intimacy; talk is the essenc...
Wood, J. T. (2011). Gendered Verbal Communication. Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture (10th ed., pp. 118-137). Boston, MA: Cengage.
A widely accepted myth that we all might hear everyday or might even think we experience is women do all the talking. In different languages around the world, there are many different sayings that say women talk too much. Myth 6, “Women Talk Too Much”, by Janet Holmes addresses the question if women are the ones who take up all the talking time or is this just a myth? I will address the main ideas and my reaction about Myth 6.
Our capacity as human beings to acquire and express complex methods of communication has been one of the biggest driving forces of humanity’s success. These complex linguistic systems are what we know as language. Language gives us a method of expressing concepts, emotions, and ideas in a varied way which sets us apart from all other animals. Language and gender is an area of sociolinguistics and related fields which attempt to define the differences in language related to gender, and what the inferences of these differences may be.